Essential software?

[PMC]

TheMaDMaN wrote:

I've got going DirOpus 4, DPaint 5, PPaint 7, Photogenics, SnoopDOS, Iconian, Shapeshifter, MagicWB, NewIcons, MUI, ClassAct, IDEFix97 & WHDLoad, are there any other programs I should get?  And what hacks, datatypes, etc would be worth getting?

If you do go down the 3.1ROM route then OS3.9 will replace NewIcons with the system friendlier GlowIcons set (which I rather like).  Also shipped with OS3.9 is an unrestricted version of Genesis, which will allow you to connect to a modem for dialup, an MP3 player and an AVI player too.  

Overall, I'm very pleased with OS3.9 and have little to criticise there.  

Other programs you might want to try are:

Visual Prefs - allows you to tailor the WB window frames / gadgets and colours.  You can get some stunning results with Visual Prefs, which doesn't seem to consume much in the way of CPU time.

Magic Menu - patches the drop down menus so that you can change their colour, appearence and add shading etc.  With a graphics card you can even make them semi-transparent.

Birdie - a controversial one this, your mileage may vary.  Birdie works by patching the window borders so that you can overlay a pattern of your choice - in jpeg, gif or iff format.  It works happily with Visual Prefs and again the results are nothing short of stunning, however it does cause some problems with opening / closing screens IMHO.

PNGIcons (I think that's what it's called) - If you've a GFX card installed this program allows use of true colour icons.  There are some examples on this site and used in conjunction with Visual Prefs, Magic Menu and Birdie you'll have a desktop which will be the envy of everyone.

There are also some 68040 specific libraries which will increase the performance significantly.  

Oh, and you might find Photofolio useful.  It's a thumbnail creator utility which is very versatile and system friendly too.

[PMC]

TheMaDMaN wrote:
I do want to add the machine to the network and access the internet on it (if only to download straight to the A4K) that is assuming this is possible, and if so what software will I need.

OS3.9 will allow you to get online, but for networking you'll either need to install a Zorro network card (hard to source and expensive) or you could take the plunge and add a PCI bridgeboard to your system.

A Mediator bridgeboard is cost effective and the A4K version has Zorro slots too IIRC.  You'll have the advantage of being able to fit a PCI graphics card (either an S3 ViRGE or Voodoo), plus a Soundblaster 128 and a 10/100 ethernet card.  The all up cost of sourcing a mediator plus all the PCI cards is likely to be less expensive than trying to find all the zorro equivalents.